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The pyshp module is a bit tricky to get the hang of, but really useful once you get it going. I've written a script that reads in a csv of the example data and writes out a shapefile with the data stored as attributes of the correct datatypes. The pyshp/xbase datatyping has always been tricky for me until I found this user guide for the xbase format and as a result of this question I have written a small note on my blog regarding the relevant pyshp datatypes, part of which I have pasted below:

C is ASCII characters

N is a double precision integer limited to around 18 characters in length

D is for dates in the YYYYMMDD format, with no spaces or hyphens between the sections.

F is for floating point numbers with the same length limits as N

L is for logical data which is stored in the shapefile's attribute table as a short integer as a 1 (true) or a 0 (false). The values it can receive are 1, 0, y, n, Y, N, T, F or the python builtins True and False